Could BMAH be a precursor to actual money auction house?

BMAH allows players with a lot of gold to have a slight advantage over others. Items that were once thought off as great achievements have stopped being special. For instance ashes of al'ar was a rare mount on most servers even in wotlk, as were invincible/mimiron even in cata. Now they can be bought for gold, which just takes away the good feeling of the mount. Even if people were to do icc/ulduar etc to try get these, the chance was very little.
Notice how something that was special is no longer so.
Similar argument can be made for gear on BMAH.
However BMAH also sells current gear. This again is a very slight advantage to people with more money. Now, I do not play WoW and am not complaining, I just had this thought while looking at the new BMAH items list today (http://www.wowdb.com/items?filter-source=128).

Could BMAH be a sort of test to see how far they can push the envelope in order to one day bring a RMAH kind of system for items. If blizz were to get people to stop thinking of the items as something to be accomplished and start looking at them as something available for purchase, this might be a good way to do it. There would be quite a few people in wow who would not mind shelling a few bucks for mimiron head or some other exotic mount.
I am not suggesting it would be for relevant gear but for everything else, especially mounts/pets/older gear.

One also has to consider that eventually wow will slow down (at some point in future) and blizzard will need more revenue and this means looking for more revenue sources and given the popularity of wow and the generally good response of wow community to anything blizz puts on sale, blizz must have surely considered such an idea.

Would you support a RMAH in WoW which sells everything else except current expansion items?

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I think they should change some things to allow players to spend real money. I'd like to see an option to allow players to sell their accounts through BNET, players are doing it anyway, at least offer a safeguard and handle it themselves, plus they can make a lot of money if they take a % of the sale.

I also think they should sell gold. They would probably make enough money from that to justify the zillion subs they would lose from botters.

As for items on the BMAH, I wouldn't mind if they did that for real money. Might encourage some of the slackers to go out and get a job.

Blizzard already said why it doesn't work, it works in the DIII system(Despite me disagreeing with it horribly) and considering how well that went...I think Blizzard is NEVER going to do it.

Inb4 they will never do X and Y and T

Blizzard do not destroy Jaina Proudmoore's character. Make her who she once was, not full of rage and vengeance.,If you are curious about me or about my writing aspirations, feel free to pst me. Paladin-Sorcerer at your service! My Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/Aeluron Big fanboy of Yrel now. Love her now

Only thing i can see happening is EVES plex equivalent on BMAH for 100k starting bid 100k for a month sub? GG $15 is worth like 15k people wanna blow gold on that blizz found another gold sink ingame some players may opt into.

Only thing i can see happening is EVES plex equivalent on BMAH for 100k starting bid 100k for a month sub? GG $15 is worth like 15k people wanna blow gold on that blizz found another gold sink ingame some players may opt into.

Why so complex? Make game sub to have in-game form, like some BoE consumable, which can be bought in Blizzstore and resold in game and let players regulate the prices. Game time coming out of nowhere on BMAH won't be profitable for Blizzard.

right now i don't think, but if someday blizzard move from subscription model to F2p one i'm pretty much sure that a rmah will be introduced along with a more consistent shop; right now subscription+microtransaction will be overkill.

BMAH allows players with a lot of gold to have a slight advantage over others. Items that were once thought off as great achievements have stopped being special. For instance ashes of al'ar was a rare mount on most servers even in wotlk, as were invincible/mimiron even in cata. Now they can be bought for gold, which just takes away the good feeling of the mount. Even if people were to do icc/ulduar etc to try get these, the chance was very little.

Notice how something that was special is no longer so.

[snip]

If you want something to make you "feel special" over other people... then you're playing the game wrong. Most likely living the wrong life too...

I'm more than certain the person who is really good at playing the AH and making gold, and then purchases the Al'ar mount is getting a pretty damn good feeling about it... especially since he's laughing at the rest of the fools for willingly slamming their head in a car-door for weeks and months, striving to "feel special" via obtaining some pixels in a video game. >_<

"Tell them only that the Lich King is dead... and that World of Warcraft... died with him..."

Originally Posted by BenBos

That's the ONLY reason you would post 9600 posts over 3 years: a mission of hate.

right now i don't think, but if someday blizzard move from subscription model to F2p one i'm pretty much sure that a rmah will be introduced along with a more consistent shop; right now subscription+microtransaction will be overkill.

That's my take on an RMAH in WoW. I'm more than certain that it will happen, but ONLY when they can properly test it out and get solid numbers back (Diablo III) to see if it can, indeed, make enough money to warrant abandoning the subscription model.

I'll tell you what though... I'd MORE than be happy to return to WoW if they tossed in an RMAH and dropped the subscription charge. I'd MIGHT even consider trying to get over my absolute hatred for CRZ for that. :P

"Tell them only that the Lich King is dead... and that World of Warcraft... died with him..."

Originally Posted by BenBos

That's the ONLY reason you would post 9600 posts over 3 years: a mission of hate.

BMAH allows players with a lot of gold to have a slight advantage over others. Items that were once thought off as great achievements have stopped being special. For instance ashes of al'ar was a rare mount on most servers even in wotlk, as were invincible/mimiron even in cata. Now they can be bought for gold, which just takes away the good feeling of the mount. Even if people were to do icc/ulduar etc to try get these, the chance was very little.
Notice how something that was special is no longer so.
Similar argument can be made for gear on BMAH.
However BMAH also sells current gear. This again is a very slight advantage to people with more money. Now, I do not play WoW and am not complaining, I just had this thought while looking at the new BMAH items list today (http://www.wowdb.com/items?filter-source=128).

Could BMAH be a sort of test to see how far they can push the envelope in order to one day bring a RMAH kind of system for items. If blizz were to get people to stop thinking of the items as something to be accomplished and start looking at them as something available for purchase, this might be a good way to do it. There would be quite a few people in wow who would not mind shelling a few bucks for mimiron head or some other exotic mount.
I am not suggesting it would be for relevant gear but for everything else, especially mounts/pets/older gear.

One also has to consider that eventually wow will slow down (at some point in future) and blizzard will need more revenue and this means looking for more revenue sources and given the popularity of wow and the generally good response of wow community to anything blizz puts on sale, blizz must have surely considered such an idea.

Would you support a RMAH in WoW which sells everything else except current expansion items?

a gold sink is a gold sink the bmah being another in a long line of gold sinks doesnt have anything to do with the rmah other then the word auction house.

also please tell me how a small portion of the playerbase buying mounts that rarely show up for near gold cap makes them so much more available?

and also how is making enough gold to buy most of these items NOT an accomplishment?

blizzard WILL NEVER sell buy to win items for real money EVER. they will however sell white transmog sets eventually because that is a billion dollar idea O-O

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

No. DIII RMAH is a precursor to RMAH in WoW. BMAH is for people who couldn't get nice things in game to get nice things. And a gold sink.

Beat me to it. :P

If ANYTHING (and this is a stretch)... the BMAH could be considered a tie-in symbiotic companion to a future RMAH, as (presumably) the RMAH would most likely operate the same way as D3 - and allow one to sell/purchase gold from other players via the RMAH.

"Tell them only that the Lich King is dead... and that World of Warcraft... died with him..."

Originally Posted by BenBos

That's the ONLY reason you would post 9600 posts over 3 years: a mission of hate.

That's my take on an RMAH in WoW. I'm more than certain that it will happen, but ONLY when they can properly test it out and get solid numbers back (Diablo III) to see if it can, indeed, make enough money to warrant abandoning the subscription model.

I'll tell you what though... I'd MORE than be happy to return to WoW if they tossed in an RMAH and dropped the subscription charge. I'd MIGHT even consider trying to get over my absolute hatred for CRZ for that. :P

look unless everyone is from china theres no way blizzard would ever make a profit from removing the subscription

"I was a normal baby for 30 seconds, then ninjas stole my mamma" - Deadpool
"so what do we do?" "well jack, you stand there and say 'gee rocket raccoon I'm so glad you brought that Unfeasibly large cannon with you..' and i go like this BRAKKA BRAKKA BRAKKA" - Rocket Raccoon

For instance ashes of al'ar was a rare mount on most servers even in wotlk, as were invincible/mimiron even in cata. Now they can be bought for gold, which just takes away the good feeling of the mount. Even if people were to do icc/ulduar etc to try get these, the chance was very little.
Notice how something that was special is no longer so.

I will bite on this, because usually this kind of posts inflate a situation to further their point.

Ashes of Alar (and Mimi's head) became doable by smaller and smaller groups until it is now soloable (for some). Those mounts still has a small dropchance.

They now have a similarely small chance to appear on the BMAH. And you most likely need 999.999 to buy it. To me that means: It stays incredibly small.

That said: The whole RMAH and BMAH might indeed be a test for durther projects. As CRZ might be a test for one huge game where millions are on the same playing field...

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

... there are lots of different types of players, with different amounts of time to play, and different tastes for the content and difficulty and time commitment they want to give to any of those pieces of content. The person that plays for an hour or so a few times a week is playing the same game as the person that plays five hours every night.....

I wish people would stfu about the BMAH. Yes you CAN buy gold to use on the BMAH but thats not the way blizzard intends it, i could also pay a hardcore raider to play my character if i wanted to but i dont.
It takes a long time to get the gold to buy things like Ashes of Alar or invincible and a lot of dedication, sure theres some people that say its easy, but you get those people with all aspects of the game "anyone could get 16/16 hc it just means you have no life" etc. Also the reason you see ashes so much is because its been soloable since cata, not because 1 or 2 on your server appeared on the BMAH.
If theres ever a precursor to a RMAH it wasnt the BMAH it was the blizzard store.